Pilot - Nortel VoIP phones connecting to Cisco 6500

keithdew 18 years ago

We have been supporting Nortel VoIP trunk traffic (PBX to PBX w/VGMC) for several years now without any issues. We are now about to embark on our first VoIP to the desktop pilot using Nortel 1140/1150 handsets along with a CS1000E switch. We use all Cisco networking equipment in our infrastructure. This initial pilot will consist of several 6500E (sup32) closet switches utilizing WS-X6148A-GE-45AF (PoE) modules.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience or know of any design guides that speak to how Nortel VoIP phones interact with Cisco switching equipment. There are a lot of considerations (i.e. PoE, voice VLAN, DHCP parms, QoS etc.) I don't have any prior Cisco VoIP phone experience but have heard of some caveats (i.e. CDP can't be used) between Nortel and Cisco when connecting IP phones.

Any suggestions would be welcome Keith

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Bob 18 years ago

Well, Cisco will look at the phones as Class3, so they figure it's 15 watts per phone. VLANs can be built, QOS defaults to "EF" (46 dec) and the switches/router can be configured to work properly, and perform QOS. You'll need to properly understand how to configure the DHCP server to interact with the VLAN situation as it applies to the DHCP options.

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Renegade 18 years ago

Hi Keith, Sounds like you are embarking on a similar venture to us. We have completed the same thing in Feb this year, however we are denied from rolling out the I.P. phones themselves due to the Data Network Team's reluctance to apply QoS to the LAN. As a result we are just using our new I.P. Telephony network solely for I.P. trunks. I have snuck a few in for my team to use, and the result is excellent. Another gotcha that we found is that there is a small string of code that needs to be applied to each Cisco Data Switch to allow DHCP to work. Without this you need to manually assign each phone it's own I.P. Address. No big hassle just as long as VLAN's (if you use them) are transparent from the VLAN that your CS1000 sits on.

Good luck!

snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net wrote:

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